Debunking Nine Myths of the Gun-Control Debate

Jan. 2 (Bloomberg) -- So many myths and misunderstandings
about gun control, from all sides of the debate, and so little
time! Here goes:

Myth No. 1: The extremism of the National Rifle Association
and its chief executive officer, Wayne LaPierre, is hurting its
cause.

LaPierre’s seemingly unhinged recent performances, first at
his no-questions news conference and then on NBC’s “Meet the
Press,” have convinced gun-control advocates and members of the
news media that he is out of his mind. He isn’t. His appearances
were calibrated to appeal to the Second Amendment absolutists
who make up the NRA’s base, and to help sell weapons
manufactured by companies that rely on the NRA to keep their
market as unregulated as possible. The NRA’s tactic is to gin up
paranoia among gun owners that President Barack Obama is going
to confiscate their legally owned weapons.

He isn’t. He is so far from doing that it’s comical to
believe otherwise. There’s no constitutional mechanism for him
to do so. There’s no practical way for him to do so. And he has
no motivation to do so, because he’s on record defending the
rights of sportsmen, hunters and -- this is crucial -- people
who believe in armed self-defense to own guns. As Vice President
Joe Biden said during the 2008 campaign, “Barack Obama ain’t
taking my shotguns, so don’t buy that malarkey.”

Myth No. 3: There is no proposed gun-control measure that
would make the U.S. safer.

True, there are as many as 300 million guns in the country,
with more coming into circulation every day. But some new
regulations would help. Closing the so-called gun-show loophole
-- which allows many guns to be sold without benefit of a
federal background check -- would make it at least marginally
more difficult for unqualified buyers, such as felons and the
mentally ill, to get weapons. Since 1994, about 1.9 million
purchases have been stopped because of background checks. A
semi-smart criminal, or a high-functioning deranged person,
would still most likely find his way to a gun. But it would be
beneficial to place more stumbling blocks in his path.

Myth No. 4: Renewing the assault-weapons ban is the clear
answer to making the U.S. safer.

“Assault weapons” are defined as such mainly because they
have the appearance of military-style rifles. In my definition,
any device that can fire a metal projectile at a high rate of
speed into a human body is assaultive in nature. How deadly a
shooting is depends as much on the skill and preparation of the
shooter as on what equipment he uses. Again, it may be
beneficial to ban large-capacity magazines and other
exceptionally deadly implements. But we shouldn’t be under the
illusion that this will stop mass killings.

Myth No. 5: Only pro-gun extremists want to place police
officers in schools.

Before LaPierre took up the cause of armed security
protecting students, President Bill Clinton advocated a similar
program to assign police officers to schools across the country
after the Columbine High School massacre in 1999. “Already,”
Clinton said at the time, the program “has placed 2,200 officers
in more than 1,000 communities across our nation, where they are
heightening school safety as well as coaching sports and acting
as mentors and mediators for kids in need.”

It is true that a sheriff’s deputy assigned to Columbine
engaged in a shootout with the two killers but failed to stop
them. It is also foolish to draw broad lessons from a single
incident. In 2007, at the New Life Church in Colorado, an armed
volunteer security officer named Jeanne Assam shot and wounded a
gunman who had killed two people outside the church and two
others the night before. Assam most likely saved many lives that
day. Does this mean that all churches should have armed security
officers in the pews? Again, it is difficult to extrapolate from
a single incident. But licensed and trained civilians carrying
arms do represent one solution to gun violence.

There are more than 8 million concealed-carry permit
holders in the U.S., and the number grows each year. These are
people who are vetted by local law enforcement. They commit
crime at a lower rate than the general population. And, by some
estimates, they commit crime at a lower rate than police
officers.

Myth No. 8: “An unprecedented number of Americans support
the right to own a handgun, despite the recent mass killings at
an elementary school in Newtown,” Connecticut.

This wording comes from a Washington Post article. It cited
a Gallup poll that found many Americans support some gun-control
measures, and that 74 percent oppose banning handgun ownership.
The problem in the Washington Post story is the word “despite.”
Many Americans want to own a handgun, or want to reserve the
right to own one, not despite the Newtown massacre -- but
because of it, and other such atrocities.

Myth No. 9: Video games are the real culprit.

Some reports indicate that the Newtown killer was a
fanatical video-game player, and liked such especially violent
games as “Call of Duty.” No studies have proved a strong link
between these games and actual violence. This isn’t to say that
the games aren’t perverse and repulsive: I don’t allow my
children to play them. But you can’t shoot up a school or a
movie theater with a video game. Blaming video-game makers alone
for such complicated and incomprehensible crimes is a cop-out.

What do all these misconceptions add up to? Simply that we
aren’t even close to having a serious conversation about
protecting ourselves from death by gun. I wouldn’t mind having a
national debate about the morality of the Second Amendment in
the 21st century. But we’re not even having a serious debate on
the margins.

(Jeffrey Goldberg is a Bloomberg View columnist and a
national correspondent for The Atlantic. The opinions expressed
are his own. This is the second in a two-part series.)